


Soft What Light

by georgiamagnolia



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M, Mention of bisexuality, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28358361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/georgiamagnolia/pseuds/georgiamagnolia
Summary: Clothes make the man, but could they lead to creating a couple? Olivia sees something off and Rafael sees possibility.
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Olivia Benson
Comments: 18
Kudos: 48





	Soft What Light

His pocket square didn’t match his tie. Or his socks, she checked. Olivia was distracted by it. Rollins and Carisi were taking turns explaining what they had for a warrant while Fin added the grace notes and Barba with his mismatched tie and pocket square asked pointed questions. 

“Go sit on the address, we’ll have the warrant under an hour.” When Barba said that, Fin tapped Amanda’s shoulder and nodded at the door. They got ready to go and Sonny followed them.

“I’ll wait for the paper,” Sonny said. “That good Lieu?” Olivia didn’t answer so Sonny said it again, “The plan work for you, Lieu?”

“Oh, yes, go,” Liv waved them all out of her office, expecting Rafael to follow them. He didn’t. The door swung shut after Sonny left, the latch making a small click in the silence.

Rafael stood watching Olivia, had been for nearly the entire twenty minutes they’d spent talking about the latest case, a domestic with children involved. Those cases hit hardest for all of them, for different reasons. She was preoccupied but he suspected it wasn’t the case that had her contemplative. He wanted to know what had her twisted in knots today. He could outlast her, he had time. “What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?” She turned from the window and the sunlight haloed her hair, but the overhead fluorescents let him see her expression clearly.

“What’s on yours?” she countered.

Rafael crossed his arms, leaned against her desk and waited, watching her eyes flick down as he moved, then back up. Her gaze was direct and now unwavering. He turned his own eyes down for a second and then back up to hers, keeping his own gaze steady now. He thought about what she saw looking at him. Had he spilled lunch on his tie, did she have x-ray vision and could see through his jacket that he’d left his fly down, what was it she had been so busy observing on him that she’d been distracted? He figured it out and it made the side of his mouth lift in a bit of a grin, not an entire grin but a little bit I-know-something-you-don’t-know grin. He kept his eyes on hers and resumed his somber look again. What was she imagining, he wondered. “You seem preoccupied today.”

“Nothing’s occupying me, pre or otherwise.”

Her voice was cool, her expression neutral, and Rafael recognized her perp-in-the-box voice for what it was. She could lie with a completely straight face to an offender during questioning and never get caught. She wasn’t lying now except by omission, and that was easy for her, he knew. The trick to a successful lie was eye contact and she had it mastered.

Olivia was visualizing the last time she saw Rafael which had been yesterday afternoon, shortly after lunch when they’d caught the current case. He’d been in the building on other business and stopped in and they’d gone over what they had. He’d been wearing a dark suit and white and blue checked shirt with a pink tie and pocket square. The jacket he had on was the same jacket, it had the same pocket square. His tie was dark blue and his shirt plain white. She wondered if it was entirely the same suit and why if he’d changed out the shirt and tie at work, lots of people in his office kept spare clothes in their closets at work. Had he worked all night on something, or had he been somewhere away from home for the night and running late so he needed to raid the work stash. She tried to berate herself for noticing and more for caring.

Rafael wondered if she always noticed his sartorial choices, as she obviously had today. The only person who commented on his clothes was Rita and that was only because she’d known him for dog-years. Rita never failed to compliment his black tie with the different coloured stripes diagonal across it. It wasn’t an actual comment on liking the tie but a subtle dig at how long they’d known each other. That particular tie had been a gift from a friend back in their mutual Harvard days. She knew it had been a gift from his theatre-major then-boyfriend who had dumped him less than a week after his birthday, the occasion for the gift. Rafael and Rita had gotten stupid drunk on cheap bourbon the night he was dumped. He’d tried to burn the tie in a trash-can, but Rita had stopped him. It was a nice silk tie, she’d said, if he didn’t want it, she’d keep it. He’d kept the tie but insisted that it from then on would be a gift from her and not the ex. After recovering from their Friday bender, they’d gone out with friends on Saturday and he’d met a girl named Gwen who coincidentally was in two of his justice classes. He ended up dating Gwen, small, dark-haired, blue-eyed Gwen of the delicious Welsh accent, for the rest of the semester. She left to return home then, and he’d been too busy to date. He had remained too busy to date when he worked in Brooklyn. Now in Manhattan things were still busy but he found he mostly made excuses not to date because he was pretty sure who he wanted was way out of his league. But given an opening, he’d slip straight in there if he could.

Rafael wasn’t wearing the rainbow tie today; it was a sedate dark blue with a subtle pattern of woven stripes. It did not match the pink pocket square. He’d gotten a call as he was dressing that morning and, in a hurry, he’d picked up yesterday’s jacket and shrugged it on as he talked on his phone, not realizing his mistake until he got to work, and by then busy with putting out the fires the early call had created. He supposed he could have just taken the pocket square out, but he couldn’t be bothered so left it because who noticed anyway. Obviously, Olivia, that’s who noticed. 

“Shouldn’t you be getting my squad a warrant?” Olivia finally broke the silence.

Rafael held up a finger, “Wait for it,” he said. Shortly there was a whoop from the bullpen and Rafael turned his finger to point at the door with a smug look. “I sent the request before I got here.”

“You knew we had enough information before you came over.”

“I was mostly sure, had to double check.” He crossed his arms again and kept his eyes on her.

“Now that the wait is over, was there something else I could do for you, Counsellor?”

So very many things, he thought inside his head, but instead answered with a question of his own, “Is it the repetition or the lack of coordination that is bothering you, or something else?”

Her eyes cut to the side and she turned her head, “Neither, nothing, what are you even talking about?” She moved past him and around the desk to take her chair and he turned, still leaning on her desk, now looking down at her bowed head as she rearranged paper unnecessarily on her desk.

There it was, her stall tactic, the eyes to the side and the turned head. She was trying to come up with something that wasn’t a lie but still revealed nothing, he’d seen that move before, too. “I got a call about the Bronstein case before I left home this morning and grabbed the wrong jacket, that’s all.” Olivia looked up sharply, eyes a little wide, perhaps she’d been imagining rather more nefarious reasons for the mismatch. Rafael wondered what her imagination had cooked up. “In case you wondered.”

“I didn’t.” Her head bowed over her desk again and he knew that was an outright lie. She had certainly wondered.

Olivia tried to figure out how to get the ADA the hell out of her office without any more discussion about his clothing. It wasn’t her fault that the man was a damn clotheshorse. He owned more Winter coats than most people she knew had closets. The list rolled through her head like a picture postcard rolodex: two long black coats, one with a full soft collar and one with half a soft looking collar, she’d never stroked the collars to feel them but imagined how the material must feel when she saw them. He had another shorter black coat he seemed to reserve for late in Winter when Spring was teasing its way toward the city. He had at least one camel coat, long, he liked that one for social occasions as she’d seen him wear it to the last Christmas party. He had at least two casual down coats, one brown and one black as well as a light jacket that might have been leather but she’d only seen it from a distance but couldn’t imagine he’d be the type to wear fake. She’d seen him in jeans and a polo shirt once, still wearing a suit jacket over that, as if his suits were armor he never left home without a piece of, and she knew he had powder blue jacket he wore jogging because she’d heard about that from Amanda who had been a little befuddled seeing Barba out of his usual suits. Did a jogging suit still count as a suit? Was there such a thing as jogging suspenders? That thought brought a little quirk to Olivia’s lips which she quickly tried to hide. And none of that covered his wide range of ties, pocket squares, and suspenders, not to mention the socks. His socks, holy hell, she thought, he coordinated the damn things. How big a dresser must he have to accommodate all those choices, she wondered. And how many closets did his coats and suits fill? And why on earth did she give a damn. Was her interest in his closets reaching the level of fetish or obsession and how was she going to stop thinking about his damn clothes with him lurking at her desk, anyway.

Rafael thought he might need to let Olivia off the hook, watching what he could see of her expression as she kept her head down, she seemed to still be in that contemplative mood. Then again, if this was the only way to engage her, he was loathe to give it up because he knew she didn’t see him as available. He’d heard around the water cooler that she’d dated an ADA, and was suspected of dating another. He had been new to the Manhattan DAs office then and hadn’t paid any attention to the speculation on her personal life. In his years working with her she’d been professional but friendly. They had become friends. He didn’t want to wreck that. But oh how he wanted to see where they could go if they tried. Rafael leaned over with his hands on the edge of her desk now, his angle from the side letting him see her profile under her hair as it fell forward. “Just so you don’t think I was indulging in an illicit evening on a school night.”

Olivia’s head fell to the side and she turned to look slightly up toward him, “Only on weekends then.” She immediately bit her lip, literally wanting to take the words back as soon as they escaped her mouth but found she couldn’t look away as Rafael’s eyes, now so close to her, dilated.

Rafael was struck momentarily mute by that response. She was attractive, he was attracted to her, but he’d given up contemplating anything outside of his imagination because every late-night work session they spent together and every drinks after work that turned into dinner as well always ended with them parting ways, never leading to anything remotely non-work related. They shared personal histories and childhood memories with one another, they had become best friends, but had been so very careful to keep it friendly and not moving beyond that. He thought he was being careful because she had never indicated that their bond was more than friendly, he thought she was avoiding crossing lines because she wasn’t interested. He honestly thought she deserved better than he could offer. Had he missed something along the way? And how much was he going to wreck if he just bit the bullet and asked her on a date that did not involve files and cases and warrants? How many years of their friendship would be lost if it was a disaster? How unhappy would he be if he lost her as a friend? Or could they take a chance and both be happier in the long run if he just opened up a little more. “Come to my place for dinner tonight and find out.”

“Are you,” Olivia’s dark eyes never left his, growing a little darker as he watched, “asking me out, Rafael?”

His voice was very soft as he answered, “I’m asking you in, Olivia.”

Her smile was incandescent.

**Author's Note:**

> I was in the shower and this scene popped into my head, of course I had to try to recreate it at the typewriter half an hour later. Why aren't there waterproof keyboards?


End file.
